Back to the Horseshoe

Coffee and some spooky vinyl this morning.

Happy Halloween, Internet!

For the first time in a decade, the Houghs neglected to host a Halloween Costume Party this year. As crazy as that sounds. There were a few different reasons why we pulled the plug on this family staple of ours, but basically it boiled to a.) a little bit of drama between a couple families in our Tribe (the local group of friends we hang around with), and b.) we just had a lot on our plate right now with the month of October being as busy as it was. While it killed us to cancel the party this year - it really did, it's one of our group's big events every year - we promised ourselves that we would return in full force next year around this time of year. So you can expect to be reading about another raucous costume party around this time next year.

Kris' usual fall porch decor (I hate that scarecrow.) 

So, with that pressure off us, we got to sit back and enjoy the season without the usual scramble of party-prepping, costume-designing, and house-cleaning. We also saved a ridiculous amount of money, too, so there's that. Anyway, this year Halloween fell on a Saturday (thank God - when it falls on a school night and you have to get up and go to work the next day that's the absolute worst), and our good friends the Johnsons still ended up hosting their annual driveway trick-or-treat affair. Their party, as stated before, is generally a smaller deal than ours, but then again it doesn't have to be a full-blown affair because it entails setting up a large spread of food in their garage, having a fire in their driveway, and passing out candy for kids trick-or-treating the Horseshoe (the common name for their area of the Chestnut Hill neighborhood.)

A warm-up stout before the evening's festivities kick off.

It has become a staple of ours over the eight or nine years and I see no sign of ever stopping it moving foward.

The girls each had separate plans this year, so we weren't rolling in as a family this time around (once again - every since they entered high school they've basically done their own thing, which is to be expected.) Still, we insisted on at least getting a family picture in the Study before we were all scattered to the four winds, and landed on a half-hour block where everyone was going to be home at the same time in order to snap our usual family costume pics. Once that was done, we loaded up all our crap and drove over a block or two to the Johnsons' place, where we set up shop for the duration of the evening. Par for the course, really.

And, with that, I'll leave you now with a bunch of pics from this year's Hough Family Halloween - enjoy . .

Nobody was staying back to man the fort this evening, so Kris set out one of our Halloween skeletons and had him on the front porch with the candy for trick-or-treaters. We watched several trick-or-treaters on our Ring doorbell throughout the night, and everybody adhered to the honor system - we came home at the end of the night to a ton of candy still in the bowl. That was a nice surprise, people suck nowadays.

Testing out the flash settings on my SLR in the Study. My wife is basically special needs.

The Houghs, 2026. From left to right: The Mad Hatter, a fairy, a bumble bee, and the Cheshire Cat. I didn't have a costume in mind, so figured I'd just pull something together by reusing existing costume pieces from previous years (seeing how we weren't creating a new theme since we weren't hosting a party this year.) Kris insisted I at least put an index card in the side of my hat with that Mad Hatter fraction on it, as seen in Alice in Wonderland, as she wanted to wear Abby's old Cheshire Cat onesie ('cause we'd be out in the cold all night) and she wanted to go as some kind of a couple.

We got to the Johnsons' place around 5:30pm, and I kicked things off with this beer I picked up from Cork and Ale a couple weeks ago. It was only meh.

Kris wanted a few more couple pics once we got there. Happy wife, happy life.

Abby and Ella were finalizing their costumes with a few of their friends as the party kicked off, running around and dusting themselves with whatever the hell this crap is. Looks like something straight out of 2003.

The driveway hangout of the year.

Katie and Kris start tearing into the various crock pots.

More and more folks begin to show up, anticipating the city's 6:00pm kick-off time for trick-or-treating.

I was told that I wasn't 'posing like The Mad Hatter' in the previous pics and had to step my game up. This is about the best we got this evening.

Abigail C., Abby, Ella, Harper, and Juliana, right before setting off throughout the neighborhood. . .

And of course these two had to get one of just the two of them. They changed costume ideas, like, a dozen times over the last two weeks and Kris and Courtney had to twist their arms to land on something this year. This is what they came up with.

The spread.

Mitch, Scott (Katie's husband), and Joel (Erik's best friend from high school.)

Erik and Courtney went as Wreck It Ralph and Princess Penelope this year.

The guys - Mitch, Collier, Lonnie, Jeff, and Brandon here - basically grazed all evening inside the garage,

Stef, Kris and Courtney

After an hour or so, Alayna and two of her buddies from college swung by to grab a free meal.

Alayna decided to bring the dog along with her, and that dude ate like a king this evening (bunch of adults who had been drinking for the last couple hours felt it was okay to start feeding this dog all kinds of meats and cheeses.)

Erik's little brother, Ryan, fed him a ridiculous amount of cheese while they were stopping by. . .

Consequently, Samson stunk up our house so bad with his farts over the next twelve hours. He crapped his brains out the next day.

This one was also meh. I gotta stop getting so excited about buying pumpkin beer, most of them never turn out half as good as I'm expecting them to.

Still going strong, an hour or so after trick-or-treating ceased.

Lonnie and Brandon, probably talking about sports or shoes.

Womenfolk, huddled for warmth around the fire.

Rob and Tom showed up for an hour or so (sans wives of course, their wives never come out to hang out anymore.)

The temperature was dropping rapidly - the low was around the mid-40s this evening. I had brought along a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and a coat in my car, but I never ended up needing to change into it.

Juliana's dad (forget his name), Mitch, Tom, Ryan and Scott.

Kris takes horrible selfies of us, as a general rule.

We offered to stay til the end in order to help the Johnsons clean up, but Juliana's parents ended up raging til like 1am, so we started the clean-up process the instant they drove away, getting home and crashing around 1:30am. Far too late for folks this old, lemme tell ya what.

- Brian